Larry Masinter writes:
> indicates(context) (URI) -> Concept
I'm a little fuzzy on what you mean by context. Would it be fair
to simply have several different kinds of indicator functions and drop
the notion of context?
> The definition of a URI scheme should define the
> 'identifies' function; it cannot easily define
> any 'indicates' functions. For 'http', the 'identifies'
> function winds up being "whatever you connect to
> by sending HTTP messages to the server designated by
> the host:port of the URI, using the path of the URI,
> at the time that the 'identifies' function is invoked
> by an interpreter."
What do I connect to when I GET http://www.w3.org? It's not a
computer (there are lots of them answering at that address), it's not
an Apache process (there are lots of them answering on each machine),
... Is it a file? Is the kernel which handles the file? That file
gets checked out of CVS whenever it's changed -- is it the CVS server?
Heck, is it the person who last modified the file?
I'm not being facetious -- I really can't get a grip on a particular
conceptual thing when you say "whatever you connect to." What I can
mentally grip is shared memory locations [1], although I realize
that's just another abstraction [2]. I think you're going for the
"communications end-point" model [3], which feels very natural and
right until I look closely.
> In this model, 'identifies' is construed narrowly.
> But the range of 'indicates' can be quite broad.
Yeah, that all sounds good to me.
> RDF uses an 'indicates' function. When I use
> http://www.w3.org to talk about the World Wide Web
> Consortium or the web server or a web page at
> a particular point in time -- in each case, this
> is a different context for the 'indicates'
> function.
Hrm. None of those are the "identifies" function? This starts to
sound like RDF uses a many-to-many mapping, which isn't very helpful.
I'm happy with one identifies function and one indicates function. My
problem with RDF is that you can't tell which its using sometimes.
-- sandro
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jan/0315.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jan/0319.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/2003/01/web/#endpoints